Social Media Trends for 2018

The majority of marketers already use social media marketing, so get ahead of everyone else before the new year to ensure your social media is up to date and ahead of the game.

According to Facebook, they are already reaching their maximum capacity of onsite advertising due to the recent rapid increase in popularity of Facebook advertising. Facebook currently doesn’t have a set price for advertising, they only have a minimum spend of $1 per day, making it more flexible for businesses to manage their advertising budget. Therefore, while advertising on Facebook is relatively cheap today, the price has risen significantly compared to previous years as advertising is becoming more competitive and pricey, and prices are expected to continue to rise in the coming year.

It’s estimated that viewers retain 95% of information when it’s presented in video format and only 10% when in text format. In addition to this, videos currently generate 1200% more shares on Facebook than text and images combined. This data shows the success of video content on social media and it is safe to predict that video content will be more important than photos in the coming months. Because of this, many businesses are already creating video content to represent their brands on social media.

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed upon influential people rather than the target market. Influencers can be those with authority, activists, trend setters or simply people with large social networks. Today influencer marketing is prevalent on social media and is already increasing in popularity. Not only do celebrities endorse products for brands, but so do smaller profiles with fewer followers. This is extremely useful as a social media strategy as 83 per cent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know and 66 per cent trust other consumer opinions posted online. Because of this, both user generated content and influencer marketing will be used prevalently, and brands will begin to leverage user generated content more heavily in their social strategies.

The number of mobile phone users has increased greatly in past years and the number is set to increase further in the future. In 2016 almost 70% of people around the world owned a mobile phone and 52% of people use choose to use mobile phones to browse the internet over laptops or desktop devices. It is now more important than ever to ensure quality mobile content is available to consumers due to the rise in popularity of mobile devices.

Because users don’t want to see repeat advertisements and old content, marketers are aiming to produce content that changes rather than producing recirculated content. The use of ephemeral content has become prevalent after the success of Snapchat’s instant and finite features. Snapchat’s story feature only lasts 24 hours and quickly became popular. Not long after Instagram and Facebook began to offer the same 24 hours and read once types of features due to the success of fresh content being shared regularly.

If you need assistance with your social media marketing, get in touch with us today to find out how we can help! We’re experts in social media advertising and content curation.